Stan Brakhage: DOG STAR MAN - PRELUDE

[chongkina]

You could say that filmmakers like Brakhage and Warhol were testing the limits of cinema the way other artists were testing the limits of sculpture and painting and music and so on. The problem is that in when you deliberately disorient the viewer and deprive them of context in a theatrical film, it makes it very hard for people to connect at all, let alone sustain attention. I'm a professional film critic and I've never seen "Dog Star Man" all the way through because it's like torture to me.

[Schimmerlois]

Forgot to tell you: The complete Dog Star Man can now be found on Veehd. Decent Divx quality, you should still try to catch it in a theatre or at least seek out the Criterion DVD.

[mravantgarde123]

stan brakhage and his work has really influenced me a lot

he is great

[Nachtpfauenauge665]

to be honest it doesn't stimulate or impress me at all, but i have to admit i'm not really educated in the reception of abstract films... i never got what it's all about and where the difference between art and random images can be defined. i love surreal movies but i can not cope with this kind of movies. maybe someone could teach me how to approach this kind of art? why is it so established?

[aswanksta]

@Nachtpfauenauge665 I can see how this art can be daunting as it is so far from what you expect to see even in objective terms...I would suggest reading gene youngblood's book "Expanded Cinema". There is a free pdf download on the net if you google it...that's a good place to start, but just don't expect to ever watch films like this with a mindset similar to watching traditional cinema...

[Nachtpfauenauge665]

@aswanksta thank you very much for the reference i will look in to it

[bernafett]

is this the whole thing? i thought it was about 15 mins long

[taterboob]

@leangk I'm not sure if you're trolling or not, but I just felt the need to respond. Initially, i agreed with your point of view when I was forced to watch this at a screening. My focus of study is fictional narrative, not experimental film. I'm writing a paper on Brakhage's work now, and I've realized that there is some method to the madness. There is meaning to it, you've just got to peel back the layers and search for it. Course, it could just be a case of stockholm syndrome in my case.

[stranislao]

ma tutte le parti di Dog Star Man sono mute,senza musica,senza niente????

[Schimmerlois]

@stranislao si, senza everything. Only the sound of the projector behind you...

[stranislao]

ma tutte le parti di DogStaman sono mute????

[jonarmst]

I decided to check out some Brakhage upon the recommendation of a couple of friends of mine (film students/geeks, naturally.)

Stuff like this will always mystify me and 99% of the non-"artiste" population. I have to wonder how many people would find this "important" had the tastemaker groupthink of decades past not told them they "should" like it. And hey, I'm not exactly unamenable to good experimental film or music. I guess I was just expecting the quality of Whitney's "Lapis."

[jonarmst]

@jonarmst To be fair, YouTube doesn't really do these films justice and these should be seen on a large screen. "Lapis" doesn't even look that impressive on a small screen but it's absolutely mindblowing in a theater. I'm sure Brakhage's "Black Ice" would be a nice immersive sensory overload type experience on a large screen.

[dogstarman1]

he's also showing scenes from his own life in a magical abstract poetic way. They are kind of like mystical home movies.

[sethisawesome]

This is boring.

[plobone]

Hey guys I saw your little conversation below very nice , and I though to ask you if know any artist (really fresh name lets say) that works with the digital "media" , destroying the codes of the videos or "munipulate" softwere script and stuff like that ??? Thanks

[rchbill35]

@plobone try Cory Achangel

[plobone]

Hey guys I saw your little conversation below very nice , and I though to ask you if know any artist (really fresh name lets say) that works with the digital "media" , destroying the codes of the videos or "munipulate" softwere script and stuff like that ??? Thanks

[SomeRandomAhole]

Hey, suckers....the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

[biffmercury]

Wish I had seen this film when I thought all the crappy looking film I was shooting in 8mm was caused by a light leak or failure to properly change it in total darkness or some lab snafu.  Based on seeing this, I am thinking now that I was an experimental filmmaker and didn't even know it.

[majorhoop]

the great russian filmmaker andrei tarkovsky felt very much the same about brakhages work that you do. there is a great account online of the two of them arguing about his work.

"In the mean time Jane [Brakhages wife] and his [Tarkovskys] wife are laughing and they're holding hands and smiling, like "isn't this a wonderful cock fight?"

[QueenoftheElves]

that's the spirit! i just finished a 16mm film and i had lots of problems as well :)

[mrdisco]

Entoptic!

[majorhoop]

"Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception."--Brakhage, Metaphors on Vision

"terrible editing"? guess its how you look at it......

[icantdotreflips]

Call me whatever you want but this guy sucks. I do not see any appeal what so ever in any of his films. Looks like chaos and random colors. I know his films were meant to be viewed on a huge screen with only the screen in vision but damn. No metaphors(that everyone else seems to get), terrible editing, no storyline(coherent or not), looks like film from a fucked up camera. I should show you enthusiasts my film from show on a broken ass bolex, maybe i will be the next epic experimental filmmaker

[gokinsmen]

Dude, it's not about metaphors, symbolism, or storylines. That's the mistake people make -- they think he's trying to make snooty "high brow" art. He's not. His art is primal, not intellectual and certainly not narrative. In other words, Brakhage isn't making "movies," he's creating a purely sensory experience that stimulates and invigorates your brain.

Think of it as an acid trip without any of the nasty side effects of drug addiction.

[Schimmerlois]

gokinsmen, you beat me to it, but yeah, icantdotreflips, forget about the "metaphors" - they´re bad for your eyes. And where you see randomness and chaos I chose to see a certain "openness" which provides surprise and "new" to me.

To the others: Please don´t hate him for not being able to get into the groove (Should have disabled that bloody thumbs-up/thumbs-down apparatus)

[bfbrakhage]

"Forget about the metaphors--they're bad for your eyes" is possibly the best sentence I've read in a long time.

[HandicapReborn]

@gokinsmen Psychedelics don't induce physical dependencies. There aren't any addictive qualities to LSD...stop giving it such a bad rep man!

[gsavsag]

@gokinsmen Acid is not an addictive drug

[CultOfByron]

@gokinsmen I don't believe acid is addictive in the sense that you mean, you're talking about opiods, cocaine and things like that. The only sense in which lsd is addictive is psychologically.

[majorhoop]

@CultOfByron --as far as i know none of the hallucinogens are "addictive", but the word has certainly changed its meaning in the last 30 years. i really cant imagine anyone being "psychologically" addicted to lsd. i believe that the words "addiction" and "compulsion" have been confused in the popular media, and this confusion has spread into the medical community. i dont believe cocaine is physically addictive, i.e. there are no physical withdrawal symptoms. opiates are another matter.

[esiotrot17]

@gokinsmen you can't get addicted to acid!!

[ZenOkeanos]

@gokinsmen

Correct. Except that the artist himself totally helped to promote this basic mistake even to the point of wanting people to believe every hand-painted frame had some personal metaphorical significance symbolizing his thought process. Terrified by the word "abstract". Imagine this kind of verbiage for every painting ever painted.

[bone8352]

@gokinsmen too bad acid isnt addictive but i think your right about him

[HandicapReborn]

@icantdotreflips "Looks like chaos and random colors"

That makes me smile :) Haha, I love tre flips! :D

[previewfilms]

It really get's interesting around the 3min mark when Larry finds out Samantha is having an affair with Darren...

[Ozarkeree]

Man, I screwed that up. I thought it was Darren having an affair with Larry.

[nightswimmer1975]

uuhh the font?! ? Yeah its called stanbrakhage100..

[BABABUDSKI]

Does anybody know what the name of the font is for the title?

[JonneyBuck]

This is my first taste of Brakhage and I really enjoyed it, thanks a lot.

[guidobondioli]

look up Myron Ort.

[dragmio]

"One of the most beautiful films ever made"? Brakhage himself said he would edit out from his films anything that had any resemblance of aesthetic appeal, that is of being "beautiful". He was an orthodox "contemporary artist" bowing before John Cage's nonsense that "the art begins where the beauty ends".

I'm sure Leonardo, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Mozart and the others would agree too. Yeah, right...

[Schimmerlois]

"said he would edit out from his films anything that had any resemblance of aesthetic appeal," - he didn´t quite succeed in that respect, right? And I wouldn´t give a toss about his "art" had he succeeded. Thankfully, film in its brighter moments (as can be seen here) is more than just art, certainly more than "orthodox" laboratory art.

[guidobondioli]

I always thought his talk was irresponsible; a way to hide his lack of knowing.

[GameFaceGaming]

FAAAAAAAAAAAAG

[maismangelatasoupe]

en réalité cette vidéo est plus colorée, plus intense

[majorhoop]

or as william carlos williams put it:

"--Say it, no ideas but in things--"

and vertov is an excellent illustration of your idea that the found object is more compelling than our "predictable inventions". i think that is why i enjoy "Untitled (for Marilyn)" and "Comingled Containers" the most of his later work. in these films he strikes a balance; his abstract meditations are rooted in recognizable realities. for me, his vision becomes more powerful within this context.

[Schimmerlois]

Yeah, I should have said "compelling". (originally I wanted to write "infinitely superior"-hoho). and you´re right about the balance, obviously in DSM there´s enough going on no camera recorded in the external world...

And to drop one more name related to the invented/found (in German one could say "erfunden/gefunden") opposition: Manny Farbers dichotomy of "Termite art vs. white elephant art" - the termite keeps on burrowing, overcoming just the next obstacle, "finding" in the process...

[majorhoop]

thanks---another subject (if i may go on) of interest to brakhage is the subjective nature of human perception of the real. at about 14:40 (i think) of prelude is a shot in which the screen appears blank until it gradually focuses and we discover some objects as though under a microscope (now you see it, now you dont). later in dsm there is a close-up shot of branches in which he focuses five separate times closer and closer (what we see depends on what we focus on). in i think part 1........

[majorhoop]

the mountain he climbs appears to be getting steeper until he's climbing straight up and we realize this illusion is created by tilting the camera. the camera/eye plays tricks!

[majorhoop]

(please note: the reference to "fourteen:forty" was not meant as a link to click on, of course)

[Schimmerlois]

...while Brakhages later films (the painted ones) surely are beautiful, they lack a certain something - the real.

I think the Pound connection is quite instructive (as is Pound himself, the teacher): using the concrete image as trigger for memories leading to the sudden attack of the "fluidum" (Austrian writer Okopenko coined this) , getting rid of the decorative and the plague of allegorism -all these ideas and postulations could -ehm- illuminate also something like Dog Star Man.

[majorhoop]

ive only just now read a little online of okopenkos ideas of the "fluidum". it certainly seems to correspond with brakhages "hypnogogic vision". also in a way Dog Star Man is almost a cinematic illustration of pounds "idiogrammic method". okopenko sounds very interesting! what would you recommend i read (in translation unfortunately)?

[Schimmerlois]

Yes, Andreas Okopenkos poetological essays are really exhilarating. I only got to Pound through them. The essays on "Fluidum" and "Konkretionismus" could be found in some german "Collected" or "Selected Writings". Unfortunately they don´t seem to have been translated. (On Google Books -"El proceso creativo" p.239 are some excerpts - you prob. have seen it)

His best known literary work would be the "Lexikon Roman" a novel organized in lexicon articles, where the reader can zigzag through...

[Schimmerlois]

... the "Images" of a boat trip down the Danube. Again, there seems to be no translation...

In english I only found "Child Nazi" (haven´t read it, but prob. worth getting) and some pieces in "Contemporary Austrian Poetry in Translation: An Anthology" - but that was just a quick search.

(Just read on in the Google Books piece and it´s actually quite good)

[Schimmerlois]

Ok, the "Google Books piece" is also available in html: Consciousness and Literary Creativity by

Hermann Hendrich

[Schimmerlois]

Major, thanks for all the input!

For me the thrill I get from Brakhages earlier work comes from his using pieces and splinters of reality, his scooping from the inexhaustiveness of the world to weave it into his filmstream/ our dreamstream. The found object is always superior to the predictable inventions of our dull brains - in film categories think of Vertovs kino eye(s) leaving the studio vs. the boredom of Cartoon - in visual (fine) arts terms think of painting vs. colourising. And ....

[pipefx64]

Alas, I'm a film student on what is supposedly ranked as the top film theory course in the whole U.K., and my university has the 2nd largest film library in the world, yet essentially no non-narrative cinema is taught and the library's collection is totally devoid of many incredibly important film makers like Brakhage. It's made worse by the fact that it is essentially impossible to acquire any of his works over here. The criterion anthology, for example, has only been released as region 1.

[christovk8]

what uni are you at?

[majorhoop]

there is a new 2 disc set out called "Treasures IV: American Avant Garde Film 1947-1986" that has apparently been released as region 0. it is available through amazon uk but its kind of pricey. it has one film by brakhage and is an excellent introduction to this neglected genre. maybe you can get your school to buy it!

[Schimmerlois]

Pipefx, I uploaded another 5 minutes of Dog Star Man for you - this time even in HD.

[zara60]

when it was produced?

[majorhoop]

prelude 1961----part 1 1962----part 2 1963----parts 3 & 4 1964

[zara60]

i think that this film dialogues w/ 'sirius remembered' (59). sirius is 'star-dog'. the cherokees call her of 'wolf'. do you have more information on that?

[majorhoop]

"dog star man", "the dead", and "sirius remembered" are all concerned with death. the connection between the "white tree" (which he cuts down in "dsm") and the death of his dog was made in "sirius remembered".

many of brakhages allusions and influences were literary. "gaudier-brzesksa" by ezra pound was important to him at this time. "dog star man" was the name of a bad novel he read when he was younger. he liked the title. his friend michael mcclure wrote a very good essay about this film.

[zara60]

fantastic - i'm fan of mcclure (pound, too), & a friend is publisher in brazil of 'scratching the beat surface'.

d'ont i want to abuse of his patience, but wich the name of the essay?

[majorhoop]

the name of the essay is "Dog Star Man: The First 16mm Epic"----Film Culture (magazine New York)#29 Summer 1963-------i like mcclure too. the book "Film Culture Reader" has work by brakhage, mcclure and others. pound at the time of "gaudier-brzeska" was exploring the possibilities of writing a long 'imagist' poem. brakhage wondered if he could make a long film in his similar, collage-like style. brakhage and poet robert creeley and their wives were close around this time.

[lichterpeter]

one of the most powerfull non-narrative in the filmhistory

[Schimmerlois]

"non-narrative" - yes, true enough for the Prelude; it´s also the reason why part two is not as successful, I think. There you can´t avoid the narrative of the stumbling Walden character. Still, sitting through the whole 5 parts in your local Filmmuseum is a wonderful experience. Never had one boring minute. Never have with Brakhage.

[Schimmerlois]

This clip should have been in HQ. But since Youtube has done away with that option, please add &fmt=18 to the url to see the slightly better mp4-version.

[majorhoop]

the prelude to dog star man is the masterpiece of brakhage at the end of his early period.....i think there is a very simple story to the whole film----a guy climbs a mountain and chops down a tree.......but, as with say james joyce, theres a lot behind seemingly mundane things........i hope people pick up on your recommendation to watch the criterion version........thanks for making this available at least.........